Managing the Image. The Visual Communication Strategy of European Right-Wing Populist Politicians on Instagram

Abstract

The visual social media platform Instagram is a popular tool for political image building. Drawing on image management theory as well as right-wing populist and visual communication, this study explores how eight European leading politicians of right-wing populist parties present themselves on Instagram. The aim is to provide a first insight into relevant characteristics and patterns of their Instagram communication. The approach is twofold: A comprehensive visual content analysis (N = 724) is followed by hierarchical clustering on principal components. Three types of messages were identified, the most important ones being the creation of a professional image and the demonstration of closeness to citizens. Surprisingly few of the categories considered as relevant for right-wing populist communication were detected. At the individual level, politicians differ in the messages they emphasize.

Keywords:

• Content analysis
• hierarchical clustering on principal components
• instagram
• populism
• political image
• visual communication

Notes

1 As defined in the literature (Aalberg et al. 2017; Heinisch, Holtz-Bacha, and Mazzoleni 2017).

2 To analyze posts in languages other than German and English, computational methods, i.e., translation software based on neural networks (DeepL), were used. Languages that could not be translated adequately were excluded.

3 Posts with multiple images on individual pages.

4 Alice Weidel's (AfD) account consisted of only 24 images which were fully included in the sample.

5 Terms translated from German.

6 The in-depth structure describes the latent level of meaning of the images and cannot be collected quantitatively. Since the study focused on broader patterns, this dimension was not assessed.

7 As this variable relates to the representation of the politician concerned, it was only coded if the politician was depicted.

8 Black, Indigenous, and People of Color.

9 (Extreme) close shot: portrayal of the politician from shoulders to head or anything closer than that, e.g., portrayal of body parts (eyes, hand); medium (long) shot: portrayal of the politician from knees to head or in full length, excluding the surroundings; long/full shot: portrayal of the politician in full length, including the surroundings.

10 Some variables (context, gaze, angle) were only coded if the politician in question was visible. If not, 'no account holder` was noted.

11 Graph representing the point cloud of the rows in multiple correspondence analysis, i.e., the individuals (here: Instagram posts) (Greenacre 2007).

12 Inspections of the clusters showed that the solution remained stable: Clusters 1 and 2 remained the same, while the cases from Cluster 4 were integrated into Cluster 3.

13 Unfortunately, it was not possible to link posts by Heinz-Christian Strache (former chairman of the FPÖ), as the account was temporarily deleted, which removed older posts.

Additional information

Funding

I received financial support from the Research Network ‘Communication, Media, and Politics’ at the University of Koblenz- Landau for my research.